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Cindi
Peyton led a more unconventional life than many of our classmates.
She travelled widely, experimented with life-styles and careers,
suffered personal tragedies, and yet always seemed the same
unpretentious girl I knew in high school.
Many of us
hung out at their family home, which had a rec room and pool table,
and attended many parties there.
One year
Cindi and I walked out along the North River Road in the afternoons
to ride some horses which otherwise never got ridden. We had to
catch them, and rode bareback, but I don’t think either of us rode
much after that. (I certainly didn’t!) She was more daring than I,
and it was probably her idea. Some of you may remember painting the
water tower with a big 63 during our freshman year; it was Cindi who
went up the long extension ladder.
Perhaps she
had more intimate friends, but we had a more casual relationship. I
remember her as essentially calm, positive, and self-directed. She
was truly an individual who followed her own path.
Instead of
attending the University of Colorado, where she had been accepted,
Cindi decided to stay in France after a summer post-grad trip there.
When I went to spend a year in France a year later, I moved into the
hotel where she was living, grateful to have a familiar face there,
but didn’t see her much and after the first month I moved and didn’t
see her again for about 40 years.
When we
bumped into each other one day on Maui, (we recognized each other!),
she was focused on the present, living on communal land in a
rainforest in a tree house. It was far from my home and workplace,
and I only visited her there once, when Marcia Walerstein came to
visit. We hiked up to see a Buddhist stuppa being built by her
friends nearby. Although her official address was Paia, she lived
further out, in a wonderful lush area inhabited largely by
alternative life-style people, in part because it was such a long
and slow drive on curving and often wet roads that few travelled to
town on a daily basis.
She knew the
Tibetan monks at the local Tibetan Buddhist temple, and possibly
went to their services, but what I do know is that when she was in a
car accident a few years later, the monks came to the hospital and
helped her healing. She told me, on the third occasion of our
contact, that she made a remarkable speedy recovery, and attributed
it to their intervention
She wanted to
be a substance abuse counselor and went back to WL to study, where
she reconnected with some of our classmates. I hope many of you will
add to this remembrance.
In spite of
our limited history together, she is a childhood friend I will
always remember, for her honesty, humbleness, and courage in facing
new challenges.
Marilyn
Paradiso
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